Introduction

The Program Committee for the thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association began its work in early 1975, after several months of consultation with David Landes, President-elect of the Association. The basic goal of the Committee was two-fold. First, we selected a general theme—“Historical Dimensions of Social and Political Economy”—which would reassert the fundamental and integral importance of society and politics within economic history. It was, and is, our considered judgment that economic history runs a grave risk of losing general appeal and significance if it becomes a latter-day scholasticism focusing almost exclusively on narrowly defined “economic” problems. Second, we wanted to attract to our meeting and Association scholars with varied interests and methodologies within the entire field of economic history broadly conceived.